1. Field of the Invention
The present invention concerns a method of personalizing Internet access; it also concerns an intelligent telephone network and a service for personalizing Internet access.
2. Description of the Prior Art
The invention concerns access to networks and more particularly access to the Internet. In the remainder of the description the Internet will be used by way of example on the understanding that the invention could be applied to other networks.
A user generally accesses the Internet from a user terminal using the telephone network to set up a call to an Internet Service Provider (ISP). The telephone network can be the standard public switched telephone network, a public mobile network, a digital network such as the integrated services digital network. The ISP dynamically allocates the user an Internet address enabling the user to send and receive calls to and from content providers using the Internet protocol.
Intelligent network services are added value services provided by telephone operators, over and above line set up and billing. These services include call forwarding, pre-payment, toll free calls, special rates for certain calls, calling party authentication and the like, for example.
The rapid expansion of the Internet has given rise to new problems; in terms of content, the information available on the network can be shocking (in particular information of an erotic nature) or its distribution can be illegal in certain contexts (certain political information). Depending on the envisaged use of the network, various forms of filtering are desirable, such as filtering by parents of access to the network by children, filtering by governments of information circulated in their territory via the network and filtering by companies of access to the network by their employees.
Various solutions have already been proposed for filtering information obtained on the network, including software products designed to be installed on the terminal of a user for filtering access to certain Internet sites. These products are limited and filtering on the basis of the site name is difficult to implement because it calls for continuous updating. Such updating is difficult in practice given the large number of sites created each day and the ease of transferring from one site to another Internet address. Such filter devices can be deactivated relatively easily, for example using information available on the network.
In addition to this familiar filtering problem there arises a new problem of matching the Internet to characteristics specific to a given calling party. There is also the new problem of maintaining the same type of service independently of the service provider.
The invention proposes a solution to the new problem of adapting Internet consultation to characteristics specific to a user. It further enables a bespoke service to be offered to a user, whichever ISP is chosen.